


Before it Catches You

by ouroboros



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Frottage, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Gansey/Everyone, M/M, Making Out, Practice Kissing, Self-cest, Time Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-12
Updated: 2015-11-12
Packaged: 2018-05-01 06:23:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5195480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ouroboros/pseuds/ouroboros
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“I know you’ll want to do it right, and each of them like it a little differently. I can tell you, of course, but it’s more something to show you.” </i> </p><p>  <i>You are pretty sure what that means but you nod anyway, wetting your lips with your tongue. He’s smiling a little sheepishly, like he remembers how weird this was for him the first time. Because it <i>is</i> weird. He’s talking about kissing you. Your own self, showing you how your friends like to be kissed. It may be one of the most embarrassing things ever to have happened in Cabeswater, or in the whole of the world, but it’s not like you don’t already know the agonizing depths of your capability for embarrassment. If he is okay with it, you should be too.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Before it Catches You

**Author's Note:**

  * For [prizefights](https://archiveofourown.org/users/prizefights/gifts).



> Prizefights requested Gansey/Gansey, and I went the canon era/post death route. This prompt was a lot of fun to indulge myself with. I hope you like it!
> 
> One hundred million thanks to [Skylark](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Skylark/pseuds/Skylark) for the most thorough beta experience of my life.

When you see him for the first time, you almost don’t believe it. 

The forest doesn’t speak to you like it speaks to Adam or Ronan. You fare about as well with Cabeswater as you do with Latin: old trees and dead languages aren’t as swayed by dimples and a slow, easy drawl like the regular populace you’re used to. But, just like Latin, you typically have a friend around to help you out.

You don't today.

You are alone until, all of a sudden, you are not. Until he’s just _there_ , standing in a copse of pine trees across the meadow from you. And “he” is maybe not even the right word for it, you think, since he is _you_ , only more bedraggled. He looks sad, but not lost. His uniform is wet and his hair is in his face, the way you never let yours get when you’re in public. You reach up to correct it but your hair is fine, nothing out of place. 

You blink. He smiles. _Interesting._  

You’ve seen enough in these woods to make you want to trust your eyes. So when he moves, shifting in the same sort of way Noah does, you call out. “Wait!”

He flickers behind a tree. You aren’t sure if you should bother expecting a response, but _god_ , you want one. You feel the pull of your desire in your guts. You want Cabeswater to listen to you so badly. You want it to be yours, you want to belong to it like Adam and Ronan do, like you belong to them. You want to deserve it.

You run after him, but he’s not anywhere. The tree he hid behind looks normal; there are no fingerprints on the moss growing there, though you’re not sure you could identify what those would look like anyway. You file tracking signs away in your mind as the next research subject to tackle. 

Then you hear a laugh. It does not come from your throat but you know, as the hairs on the back of your neck raise up, that it is yours. 

A hand squeezes your shoulder. You feel a thumb run up the side of your neck and into your hair, and you shiver at the intimacy of it, trying hard not to lean your cheek into the touch. When you turn to face him there is no one there. 

You stand there, shaking. He’s gone. The forest is still and quiet around you, and you do not want to be bested by it, so you sit down on a rock and open your journal. You make yourself take notes on wind patterns, carefully skirting doodles in the margins of Adam’s jawline and Ronan’s scowl. Breathing normally is hard, with the rushing pace of your pulse. You can’t ignore the nerves shivering up your spine, and you aren’t sure if you hear bees, but you think you could, maybe, if you thought about it long enough. 

With no one to call them off, you run back to your car and drive, white-knuckled, all the way home.

~~~

When you go back a week later, you are better prepared. You stayed up late for several nights planning for it, researching what you could and pacing (avoiding the creaky floorboard so as to not wake up Ronan) back and forth across the Monmouth floor when you ran out of avenues to pursue. 

You can only imagine that your other self had something to say to you, and you intend to figure out what.

You park The Pig on the edge of the forest and check your journal for the notes you made, one last time:

Other-me Positives:  
-Possibly advice opportunity?  
-Sent from Glendower?  
-Could be nice to have someone to talk in depth about quest with (possible lack of tension occasionally present in such conversations?)

 

Other-me Negatives:  
-Vanished quickly  
-Did not heed request to stay corporeal  
-Evil?  
-Unexpected/inappropriate touching (results--confusing?)

 

It all still feels true. You tuck your journal into your back pocket and walk into the middle of a clearing to wait. You try to clear your mind, but it’s impossible. You want too much. He’ll probably know that, you realize, since he’s you, so you let your desire crawl up your throat, cutting crescents into your palms where your fingers are clenched. 

It isn’t long until you feel him breathing next to you, and you open your eyes. 

“Hello,” you say. There are no rules for greeting yourself. You did not learn about this in Cotillion. But you are polite to a fault, so “Hello” it is.

“Hello, Gansey,” he says. He extends his hand, but not for a handshake. Instead he presses it to your face, cupping your cheek like he’s trying to confirm that you’re real. He looks wet, a few curls stuck to his face, but his touch is dry. 

His fingers slide down your neck and press against your skin. Your pulse beats under the pressure of his fingers and his eyes widen like you are something sacred. His hands are cold. 

Thinking about all the things this could mean is too much right now. Instead, you remember the questions you had prepared. “Why are you here?” you ask.

“I have some things to tell you,” he says. His face is sharp, flickering in and out of focus. He is beautiful in a way you had not realized that you were. You thought of yourself as the kind of handsome that was ordinary, useful when necessary. But his eyes are hungry and desperate for you, and you want to take all the need that has left him empty and fill him with what is left of you; until there is only one of you, between your two. 

His fingernails dig into you and you shudder. You’re ready, but your voice still shakes. “What is it you want to tell me?”

His hand is running along the seam of your shirt in a way that he seems to think is casually comforting, except it feels a little forced, and is that what makes Adam flinch away from you? His tongue, pinker than you knew it was, runs across his lower lip and his eyelids flutter. His lashes are so long. Are yours like that? There are so many of them. You want to count each one; you want to flee. 

It is so much, all of a sudden. Buzzing swells in your ears, and you know what that means. They are coming for you, both of you, equally vulnerable. Your eyes close and you feel the tilt of vertigo under your feet.

“Look at me,” he says, tightening his thumbs on your triceps. “Breathe.”

He counts the rhythm of your inhales and exhales for you and tucks a fallen curl back behind your ears where you like it. “They don’t get us. I’ve done this before. You do fine, we do fine.” He breathes with you, and you’re not sure if he needs to, but you don’t focus on that. 

You want to follow instructions. There has not been a night in recent memory when you have not stayed up wishing for a sign or a direction, for something to tell you what to do with all the information you’ve gathered. You wait for him to tell you a direction to search in, a rock to flip over, a cave to explore. There should be something, anything he knows that you don’t that could help you find Glendower.

“Tell me what I need to do.”

But when he speaks, one hand on your shoulder and another on your hipbone, where you _know_ he knows you’re sensitive, you can tell it isn’t the quest he is going to talk about.

“There are going to be things that you cannot change,” he says. At his words, every possible event you’d want to stop fans out before you, tightening timelines around your throat. You swallow hard. 

“What are they?” you ask, though you’re not sure you want him to answer.

He shakes his head. “You’ll know it when you see it. It’s just that there are some things you’ll want to do, first.” He seems almost shy, now, which makes you even more curious. You’re trying not to get distracted by the way he speaks when he is being earnest, the way his mouth curves in an obvious tell. You want to know what he is thinking that makes him do that, what you might be showing to people when you think you’re being suave. There is so much you want to know.

“What sorts of things?”

“Ah,” he laughs softly, at a loss for words. There’s a dimple in his cheek, and you feel a ridiculous urge to trace it with your finger.

You straighten your spine, shaking the notion from your head. “I can take it.”

He laughs again. “We’ll see. All right, then, here goes. You’ll want to kiss them.” He says it so casually you feel everything around you shift again.

“Who--” you sputter, “which--”

“All of them.”

“How?” you ask, weak. You never would have assumed that _this_ would be the topic of choice, but now your brain is inundated with the idea of kissing them, because you know who he’s talking about. Ronan, Adam, Noah, Jane. The idea has always been there, you acknowledge, but it had been a tight-wrapped bud of a thing. Now the petals are unfurling and the scent of it is flooding you. 

Kissing them. All of them. 

This is the strangest conversation you have ever had, but you’re bizarrely comforted by the fact that it is yourself telling you. You don’t need to worry about acting like you don’t want it, like you haven’t ached for the knowledge of what each of their mouths taste like, like the very idea of Ronan’s tongue in your teeth, of Adam letting you even _touch_ \--

Your knees don’t buckle, but they almost do, and he laughs at you and strengthens his grip. You don’t bother trying to not look put-upon. “What’s funny about this?”

He shakes his head. “I just forgot how easy it was to convince you, or, well, to be convinced, as it were.”

Your annoyance dissipates as you remember to be fascinated by all this. “You mean last time, when you were here,” you pat your own chest, “When you were me?”

“Right.”

You open your mouth to ask… _something_. But you aren’t sure where to begin, and the images of your friends' mouths won’t leave your brain. 

He cuts you off before you can start. “I know, you want to know how this all works,” he twirls a hand in a grandiose spiral above his head (and is _that_ what it looks like when you do that? Does it look that ridiculous to- you shake the thought off), “but I’ll tell you, you’ll learn that when you’re on this side of being us. Don’t bother with it for now.”

“The kissing, then.” you say, and you know you’re blushing, but you hope the directness is enough to counter it. “Tell me about that.”

He smiles, looking both fond and lustful. It’s combination you've never seen on your face before.

It seems impossible that each one of them would want to, that they’d let you. The infinite ways you could screw these moments up line up in front of you. The edge between your want and your fear has never felt sharper. “ _Tell me_ ," you repeat. You reach up to grab him for the first time.

“I know you’ll want to do it right, and each of them like it a little differently. I can tell you, of course, but it’s more something to show you.” 

You are pretty sure what that means but you nod anyway, wetting your lips with your tongue. He’s smiling a little sheepishly, like he remembers how weird this was for him the first time. Because it _is_ weird. He’s talking about kissing you. Your own self, showing you how your friends like to be kissed. It may be one of the most embarrassing things ever to have happened in Cabeswater, or in the whole of the world, but it’s not like you don’t already know the agonizing depths of your capability for embarrassment. If he is okay with it, you should be too.

So when he steps even closer you go with it, and put your hand on his waist. That’s gentlemanly enough. You try not to feel like you’re at the most cosmically absurd middle school formal in the universe.

"Okay, so,” he says, his voice the sort of forced casual that would be more appropriate for a demonstration of tying sailing knots, “you'll want to kiss Ronan first. We'll end up using, ah, a fair bit of time in here, compared to out there, so he'll wonder where you are when you get home."

The bizarre calm you’d built for yourself crumbles and terror threatens to tear at your gut again. "You can't mean _tonight_?"

"You’re on a deadline, I’m afraid. But it's a good moment, believe me."

You’ve gotten this far, you tell yourself. You nod.

“Ronan,” he starts, his wrists draped over your shoulders (you wonder how far ahead of you in time he is, you wonder what Ronan looks like after he’s been kissed), “likes for you to take charge.”

You feel faint. 

“Take charge,” you repeat. The words feel thick in your mouth.

“Tell him what to do, make him do it. He'll like that.”

There's not enough time to let that information sink in, because then his hand is back on your cheek and he’s leaning in and it’s all happening so _quickly_. You freeze. “Wait!” you blurt out. “Am I me in this scenario, or are you?”

He pulls back, annoyance written in the pull of his eyebrows, “You’re meant to be _you_. I’m acting as Ronan in order to let you practice on him, that’s the whole intent of the lesson—”

“Right,” you say too loudly, arms pulled to your sides. You consider asking if he might have remembered to clarify, since he’s already done this once, but then you figure he’s probably remembering thinking that, now, too, and it wouldn’t do to get _too_ circuitous about all this. You place your hand back on his waist. “Carry on, please.”

He grumbles, and you aren’t sure how you feel about your first kiss with yourself happening when you’re both annoyed, but he is leaning in again, and—

“Okay, but how am I to know how he likes it if you don’t demonstrate that first?” you start, and he groans and steps back again, pinching the bridge of his nose, which you know you only do when you’re _trying_ to look put-upon, so you talk over him. “Shouldn’t _you_ be me, first, and show me?"

“Fine!” he snaps. He grabs you by the collar and pulls you in, kissing you teeth-first. His hands are in your hair, yanking hard. He nips at your lower lip until you open your mouth for him, and then he _growls_ and digs his fingernails into your neck, pulling your bodies flush. 

You give in to it, letting him step you back against a tree and your back thuds up against the wood. He might be taking his annoyance out on you, but you're also imagining Ronan in your place, and you like the idea of him wanting to be cornered by you like this. 

You try to note every sensation, every ounce of pressure he’s leaning into you. You have been friends with Ronan longer than anyone, and you’ve probably wanted this for almost as long, whether or not you knew it at the time. The idea of him wanting your teeth on his tongue like this makes your stomach clench.

When he pulls back, your mind is light and dizzy with information about the strength of Ronan’s wants, about how you taste, about the strangeness of time. 

He looks away, taking the smallest moment to center himself.

“Okay then,” your voice is unnaturally high, and you clear your throat, “Takeaways are: Ronan likes biting. And I’d say hair pulling, but he hasn’t got that.”

“Right,” he says, falling in false-casual conversational step with you, “that’s just to give you a bit of the feel of it. You can improvise with anything in that vein of dominance, really.”

You tap your fingers along his collarbone. “Also I do wonder if you only agreed to do that so you could push me around a bit.”

He grins. “Even more satisfying than I thought it’d be.”

You purse your lips, eyes narrowed. “Well, it’s my turn, now.” 

He barely has time to nod before you launch yourself off the tree he had you up against. Hands running up his chest, you kiss him hard. Your teeth pull his lip out until you run out of flesh to scrape along, and when he opens his mouth to speak, you cut him off. 

“Sit _down_.” 

He obeys, falling to the damp, moss-covered floor of the forest. You straddle him, determined to get it right, and take him by both lapels. The kiss is deeper, rougher this time. You think of Ronan. Your heart softens, and you bite down harder and involuntarily grind your body down. You almost lose yourself in the simulation, but when he groans, the sound of your own voice reminds you and you pull back, breathing heavy.

“That’s the spirit,” he says when you bring yourself to look at him, formality barely hiding the wreckage in his voice. It seems ridiculous, now that you’re essentially sitting in his lap, but you know what it is like to hold your emotions at a distance, so doing it so literally is not anything new. You lift your hips gingerly, sliding yourself off of him to sit next to him on the moss. You let your legs touch. 

“That was more intense than I remember,” he says. He seems a bit shaken, which is unsettling. After all, he’s the one with the knowledge and expertise.

“It’s okay, though, right? You can still…we can still practice the others?” You hate how needy you sound, how needy you _are_ , so desperate even to just _think_ about kissing your friends while grinding on your own self in the middle of the woods. 

“It’ll be Noah, next,” he says, and, god, all your attention is riveted. You can’t nail down a feeling for more than one damned moment before a new one is sweeping in to take its place. This is an enlightening clusterfuck of an afternoon, you think.

“Do I get context for these?” you ask. Your instinct would ordinarily be to get out your journal and take notes, but you don’t think that this information is anything you will forget for the rest of your life. 

“You don’t have to worry about this one,” he says. “He’ll start it. He knows—” and then he cuts himself off, looking over your shoulder for a moment. "No major spoilers,” he says, smirking at you.

You breathe out through your nose. “So what does Noah like?”

He closes his eyes and lifts his face up. The sun shifts through the leaves above you both, dappling his face. The light reflects off of him differently than it would a regular person. It’s like sunshine on water, shining almost to blinding. Once again you wonder what he is; once again you do not ask.

“Noah kisses slowly. Less tongue than with Ronan, and with a more deliberate application.”  


“That sounds pleasant.”

He hums assent. “He also likes you to kiss his neck.” He taps a long finger just under his ear and then opens his eyes again. “And he’s handsy, mind.”

There are a million butterflies in your chest. “I’m okay without a demo now," you tell him. "You just… just be him.”

When he kisses you this time it is sweet and steady. Your mouth feels clumsy and inexperienced by comparison. He runs his fingers through your hair, across your shoulders and down your back. His tongue lingers in your mouth, never moving too deep, and you wonder how many times he has kissed Noah in order to be this good at mimicking him—or how much he has kissed in general, which you were heretofore worried that you were not good enough at.

You kiss him back as steadily as you can. And you go for the neck spot, which Yourself-As-Noah seems to like, too, from the way his breath shakes. He ends it with a few short pecks, and when you look at him again, he's smiling.

"That felt nice," you say, before you can stop yourself.

"It does." He winks.

"Has he done this before?" you ask, unashamed of your curiosity by this point.

He shrugs. "It seems like it, but I don't know that he'd talk about it if you asked. He might."

The silence you sit in then is more companionable than before. You don't want to rush this process. Thinking about either of the two kisses you could be practicing next actually happening feels so impossible that you're afraid to ask how they go.

Eventually he clears his throat. "I'll make it simple for you. We're going chronologically."

Chronologically. "Do I only get one each?" you ask. The thought of only kissing each of them once feels like a pit inside of you, and you're immediately flooded with guilt over how quickly greed overtook you. Getting any of this feels like the most incredible gift possible, and yet you're wanting too much, taking too much, like always. 

“Stop,” he murmurs, taking your hands. The edges of him are blurry for a moment before sharpening into hyper-focus. “Stop it. There isn’t time for this.” His thumbs make gentle circles on your hands.

“Okay.” You straighten your spine. “Okay.”

“Don’t worry about it. That’s why I found you now. You’ll have time.” 

When your breathing evens out, he continues. “So, Adam,” and your pulse spikes again.

“Adam.”

“I’d give you advice on how to start it, but you’re going to muck it up no matter what, to be perfectly honest.”

It feels like a punch to the gut, but not one that you hadn’t expected. “Of course I do.” You try not to cry. 

“He kisses you back, though. I mean, you’re an absolute mess about it at first, and he’s understandably frustrated with you, but he _does_ kiss you back. And then some.” He laughs, and his eyebrows jump up. You feel yours mirror the motion, but yours freeze up there.

 _And then some_. You cannot form words.

“I know it’s a lot,” he says, snapping his fingers, “but stick with me, here, Gansey boy.”

You don’t have it in you to be annoyed with him, since your mind is full of Adam. You want, you want.

He grins at you again, and it’s a real smile. You know what people mean, now, about what it feels to have it turned on them. “It’s best to let Adam take charge, which will be relatively simple, since you will be busy being a mess, but still. Don’t do the thing you always do where you pussyfoot around what you want from him. He hates that.” 

“I’m familiar.”

“Very.” He pats your leg where it is touching his. “He likes it when you’re direct, though, so when you gather yourself enough, tell him what you like, and don’t be shy about doing what you want to him.” 

“Jesus Christ.” You cover your face with your hands. 

“He needs you to tell him it’s okay to be rough with you, and—” 

“Please,” your voice is weak when you interrupt, “just—”

“You have to start this one, Dick.”

So you grab him by the back of the neck and pull, toppling backward onto the mossy ground (the closest you can get to Adam without him actually being there), pulling him on top of you. He matches your momentum, his lips as demanding as yours, both your hands in each other's hair. 

The way he kisses as Adam feels hungry, though some of that might be just him, remembering it. You lift your wrists over your head, and he reaches a hand up to pin them there without lifting his head to see. You picture Adam’s fingers there instead, slender and and more beautiful than yours. Rougher, too. You whimper.

He moves down your body slightly, and you angle your neck so his teeth can reach. You hiss at the contact and he makes high, hungry sounds back at you as he grinds down on you. There are leaves in your hair and at least one rock in your back and you know it isn’t Adam but it’s _good_ , and you are tired of _worrying_. You tuck your hands under his shirt and feel the lines of his abs, run your thumb along the old scar you know is on his side. 

He pulls back at the touch and you arch up at the lack of pressure. It’s shameful how much you miss his mouth on you, and the weight of his thighs, and you’re not sure if it’s only about Adam anymore, but you’re past it being weird because you want it so badly you could scream. 

“Come back,” you say, and he’s above you, staring down at you like a warped mirror, the sun above you making a halo of his hair. His eyes are wide and sorry and his mouth has not gotten pinker, even with all the kissing, and you know why. You start crying, because of _course_ you would. “It’s fine,” you say, “I don’t mind, I don’t mind.” 

You grab desperately at his lapel and he gives in and kisses you again, once, before looking down at you to say: “They love you, you know.” 

It hurts, and you want it to be true but you also feel like the ground should just eat you up with him on top of you. You want him to say it again, but you aren’t sure you deserve to hear it.

He must remember this part, because he digs his face into your neck and whispers, “They love you.” He rolls you over, “They love you.” 

You bury yourselves into each other, into the leaves, and do not come up for air until you’re shaking, breathless, tear streaked and sated, the smell of salt and mint and damp earth all around you.

The two of you lie facing each other on the ground, ankles tangled up and palms on each other’s faces. Your legs feel like there are no bones in them at all. “Did you, ah, know we were going to do that?” you ask.

He scratches the back of his neck sheepishly, eyebrows raised and lips cocked to one side. “I did recall it happening, yes.”

“And you came to talk to me anyway?”

“You needed it.” He says. “ _We_ needed it.”

It feels like it could be true, so you decide to trust yourself.

You cuddle into him and stay like that for a while. The sun would set if it were a regular sun, but it doesn’t, and you wonder if that means Cabeswater is finally caring about you enough to give you what you want—the illusion of more time.

You know you’re putting off the last one, and you know he knows it, too, so when he shrugs his shoulder, jostling you, you aren’t surprised. 

“Gansey,” he says, and it feels normal for him to call you that, like it’s somehow more your name than his. “We have one more kiss.”

You sit up, brushing a bit of dirt off your sleeve as if that is going to make any sort of difference. “We do.”

You stare at each other. You know this one is different, and not because of anything as preposterous as gender. There’s just that _rule_ of hers that’s gone unspoken thus far, and by now you’re pretty sure you know why.

“What does Jane like?” you say, trying to keep calm. 

“It’s okay to let yourself call her by her name, this time.” 

“Ah, noted.”

“Blue likes it when you kiss her here.” he leans in, pressing his lips at the outer corner of your left eye. Your eyelashes brush his cheek. 

“And here.” He kisses your temple, your throat, the dip in your clavicle, the midpoint of your sternum. You shiver and shiver and shiver. 

He brings his face level with yours again and you stare into the unnerving depths of his eyes. He leans in, and you notice the way his eyebrows lift when he tilts his face to fit almost against yours. Your mouth is so close to his. “This part she’ll take care of,” he whispers against you, and when he pulls back this time, his eyes stay closed.

It’s all too much. You think of each of them at once, and your chest hurts. You love them all so much, and it is going to eat you up, destroy you from the ribcage outward. You grit your teeth. He takes your hand, and you know he feels it, too.

You look at him, his eyes so wide and so close. He shakes his head. His frame flickers, and you figure it is from emotion, but also from whatever flimsy thread of magic or time is holding him here. You've seen that before, and you know what it means. You wonder if he can—if _you_ can lie to _yourself_. You don't think you would, now. You're not sure what the other you thinks about it. Neither of you are blinking.

"Don't ask me," he says. 

You don't.

"Good luck," he says. The look in his eyes tugs at every piece of you, and then you are tearing up again. You grab at him, fingernails sharp against his neck. He holds you and you melt into it. It’s been something beautiful, and fragile, and rare, you think, to be wholly yourself for a few hours. More yourself than you think you have ever been before. 

“Thank you for doing this for me, for showing me,” you murmur into his shoulder. 

“It was good to remember,” he says, his voice the barest whisper, “to feel it again.” His arms tighten around you, and when he flickers again it feels like electricity all over you. “Thank you,” he says. 

When he pulls back, he looks as shaken as you feel.

He stands up and extends his hand to you. You know it’s over. “Goodbye, Gansey,” he says. “Go home. Ronan’s waiting up.”

You take his hand and let him pull you to your feet. He smiles at you, hollow and sad and beautiful, and he turns to go.

“Does it hurt?” You ask it before you can second-guess yourself.

He looks defeated for a moment, like maybe he thought this time he’d trick you.

“It does,” he says. He looks you straight in the eyes when he answers, and he lets himself smile. “But it’s worth it.”

**Author's Note:**

> Everyone will die, and everyone will lose  
> So what you gonna do with the moments you have before it's you?  
> It doesn't mean goodbye  
> It's just a simple truth  
> The shedding of a lifetime of layers that once embodied you  
> Like winter into spring and summer into fall  
> The cycle of intense introspection before the curtain call  
> Cause everyone must die and everyone must lose  
> So who you gonna love in meantime before it catches you?  
> -[Motion City Soundtrack](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M361d3COqYM)
> 
>  
> 
> Sooo like if you have any thoughts about Gansey, selfcest, or Ganseycest, you should comment and tell me.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Before it Catches You](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7866217) by [ZoeBug](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZoeBug/pseuds/ZoeBug)




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